It's late, and I've taken a sleeping pill, but I also started a great book three days ago and could not stop reading it. It's called "The Help," and it is fantastic. It's about two African American domestic servants in Mississippi in the early 60s, and one white women who sides with them to write a book about their experiences as maids in white households. Some of the main themes are, obviously, the cruelty and bigotry of segregation, the ease of influence of prejudice on susceptible and weak minds, all of those sorts of things you would expect from a novel based on race from that era.
Those things all effected me profoundly. But it wasn't until the very end that I just broke down crying. The main character, Aibilene, has raised this woman's little girl since she was an infant - the baby's name is May Mobly. May Mobly's mother doesn't hate her - it's almost worse, she is disgusted by her, wants nothing to do with her, and when she does have to associate with her at all, it's usually with insults or spankings. Every day, Aibilene goes to that house and tells May Mobly three good things about herself: "You is kind, you is smart, you is important."She knows that these are the opposite of the messages she is getting from the person she needs them from most. While she's cleaning the house so that May Mobly's mother can go to bridge club and get her hair done, she rains down affection on this little girl, teaching her how to be kind, how to use her sense, and how to have dignity. She tells her for years, every day, hoping that it will make a difference. At the end of the book, Aibilene, who has helped write the book about the white ladies in the town, gets fired for "stealing," but in reality for making the white women feel like fools, having to look at their real selves. May Mobly is desperate, crying, begging Aibilene not to go, knowing that with her goes the last vestiges of love for she'll receive in her own house.
Ok, now stop right there. Because that's what I did. I stopped right there and cried my eyes out at looking at this description of a small child being separated from love. It is half an hour to midnight, and I am crying quiet in bed so I don't wake up Kam. My heart is full and overwhelmed with this, which is definitely not the most cruel occurrence in this book, but the first which makes me break down.
I was talking to a friend today, and she said, "If I were ever to go off an be an activist about something, it would be ________________." I thought about that after I left, because I don't feel like I have many convictions I would like to put myself firmly forward with, saying that I am right about it, no matter what. I'm a pretty cautious person in that way - I HATE talking politics, in general. I'm not a minority, I have been persecuted in this country, I have opinions, but not strongly enough to get in people's faces about, and I have nothing to complain about generally. However, reading this book has made me realize the one thing that would drive me to activism. Children. I love children. I love that I get to get up every day and spend time with children, I love that God has let me be in a position to speak love into children's lives, however briefly. I love spending time with kids who don't get to have very much love, either in their families or with their friends. I love love love being a momma, because being Elizabeth's momma is what gave me my heart for other people's children, too. Being a teacher enables me to do all of that.
I remember, when I was in music school, there was a stigma about teachers; after all, "Those who can't do, teach." That stigma still haunts me from time to time, but then I wonder, "Isn't teaching, doing?" What am I doing? I'm loving children, encouraging them to not only like what they do, but like themselves while they do it. I may not have a very fancy job title, or a prestigious seat in a symphony, but would I trade teaching my kids for that?
Really. Would I trade what I have now for what I previously wanted so badly?
Not ever.
After I finished crying, I finished the book with this scene. Aibilene and May Mobly are in the kitchen holding each other, May Mobly on Aibilene's lap and sobbing into her shoulder. Aibilene looks into May's tear-swollen eyes and says, "You need to remember everything I told you." To which May Mobly replies, "You mean, always wipe real good after I go?" Aibilene says, "No, the other things. The things about you." And May Mobly, looking Aibilene straight in the eye, says, "You is kind. You is smart. You is important."
Can I be the sort of teacher that can give that sort of gift to a child? I hope so.
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